Tomas Venclova

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Tomas Venclova, Warsaw 2007

Tomas Venclova (born September 11, 1937 in Memel , Lithuania) is a Lithuanian poet, writer and translator. He is the son of the politician and writer Antanas Venclova .

Life

Tomas Venclova grew up in a family that was privileged by his father's status as a high-ranking communist literary official. He attended the grammar school in Vilnius and studied from 1954 to 1960 Lituanistik at the University of Vilnius . From 1961 to 1965 he lived in Moscow. Encounters with Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova shaped his beginnings as a poet. Since 1966 Venclova has been teaching at Vilnius University.

In the 1970s, Venclova joined the Lithuanian civil rights movement. He was a founding member of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group . She demanded from the occupying power, the Soviet Union , the obligations under Chapter VII ("Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief") of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in 1975, signed Europe to adhere to. Therefore he had to emigrate in 1977 . After the regaining of Lithuanian independence , he urged his people to face responsibility and complicity in the Holocaust in Lithuania .

Some of his poems have been translated by two Nobel Prize winners for literature , Czesław Miłosz and Joseph Brodsky . Conversely, Venclova translated poems by the two of them into Lithuanian . Brodsky dedicated his poem Lithuanian Nocturne to Venclova . Milosz called the interaction of the three a "poetic triumvirate ".

Venclova teaches Russian and Eastern European literature at Yale University , USA . In the summer semester of 2010, Tomas Venclova was the Samuel Fischer visiting professor for literature at the Free University of Berlin .

Works

Tomas Venclova writes in Lithuanian and Russian. The German translation has been published:

  • The end of the world at the door. Poems . Transferred by Rolf Fieguth , interlinear translation by Claudia Sinnig-Lucas. With an essay by Joseph Brodsky . ROSPO-Verlag, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-930325-32-2 .
  • Vilnius. City guide . Paknio, Vilnius 2002, ISBN 9986-830-64-8 .
  • Vilnius. A city in Europe . Translated by Claudia Sinnig. Suhrkamp (= Edition Suhrkamp, ​​2473), Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-518-12473-0 .
  • Conversation in winter. Poems . Translated by Claudia Sinnig and Durs Grünbein . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-518-41913-7 .
  • The magnetic north. Tomas Venclova remembers Czesław Miłosz, Joseph Brodsky and Anna Achmatowa . From the English and with a comment by Claudia Sinnig. In: Schreibheft , Heft 81, 2013, pp. 53–96.
  • The magnetic north. Conversations with Ellen Hinsey . Memories . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2017. ISBN 978-3518-42633-3

literature

  • Robert Bird (Ed.): Sankirtos. Studies in Russian and eastern European literature, society and culture. In honor of Tomas Venclova . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 3-631-56931-9 .
  • Marko Martin : "If even the strangers are not strangers" - Tomas Venclova . In: ders .: Dissidentical thinking. Travel to the witnesses of an age . The Other Library, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-8477-0415-7 , pp. 242-273.

Awards

Honors

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tomas Venclova: The magnetic north . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2017, p. 27 ff. And p. 154 ff.
  2. ^ A b Reinhard Veser: Struggle for freedom. The Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova turns eighty. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of September 11, 2017, p. 14.
  3. ^ Tomas Venclova: The magnetic north . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2017, p. 231 ff. (On Boris Pasternak).
  4. ↑ The magnetic north. Tomas Venclova remembers Czesław Miłosz, Joseph Brodsky and Anna Achmatowa . In: Schreibheft , Heft 81, 2013, pp. 53–96 (on Anna Achmatowa).
  5. ↑ Venclova became an honorary citizen of Vilnius , press release of April 3, 2013 on the website of the European Foundation of Human Rights (EFHR), accessed on September 6, 2016.
  6. ↑ Tomas Venclova: Jews and Lithuanians . In: Ders .: Forms of hope. Essays . Sheep Meadow Press, Riverdale-on-Hudson 1999, ISBN 1-878818-70-8 , pp. 43-51.
  7. ↑ Tomas Venclova: He tended to ascribe his own traits to other poets . In: Valentina Polukhina (ed.): Brodsky Through the Eyes of His Contemporaries . Academic Studies Press, Boston 2008, ISBN 978-1-934843-15-4 , Vol. 1, pp. 177-188, here p. 179.
  8. ↑ Event forum Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
  9. ↑ Nico Bleutge : Ticktack behind the wall . Review, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 21, 2017, p. V2 7
  10. ↑ T.Venclovai - aukščiausias Lenkijos apdovanojimas ( Memento of the original from January 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lrytas.lt
  11. ↑ Neue Zürcher Zeitung of May 16, 2014
  12. ↑ Vilniaus universiteto garbės daktaru inauguruotas Tomas Venclova
  13. ↑ Press release from June 20, 2018
  14. ↑ Tomas Venclova tapo Vilniaus miesto garbės piliečiu


personal data
SURNAME Venclova, Tomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lithuanian poet and writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 11, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Klaipėda , Lithuania